The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (21 page)

That night I dream, but not about Maggie’s lips. I’m back in Italy, crouched on a dusty hill, a German machine gun strafing around me. The rat-tat-tat of the automatic rifle burps
and the ground shakes and I stand up. No. Yes! I stand up, take careful aim at the German helmet behind the machine gun and squeeze the trigger of my M-1.

A stream of banana pudding gushes from my rifle and I know if I can cover the bastard with enough banana pudding, he’ll drown. Only I run out of banana pudding. So I race down to the
Italian fruit peddler at the bottom of the hill and ask him to hurry with the bananas.

I point up the hill and tell him the Germans are dug in and need to be drowned. He shakes his head and tells me not to worry. He points overhead at a formation of heavy bombers.

We move to the side of the hill and watch the bombers destroy the Sixth Century Benedictine Monastery atop Monte Cassino. Germans were using the monastery to spot for their field artillery. The
bombers reduce the ancient citadel to rubble, which only provides better cover for the crack troops of the First Panzer Division who’ve kept us at bay for weeks.

I try to explain to the fruit peddler that the Germans up our small hill have machine guns and we need banana pudding right away. He calls me
pazzo Americano
– crazy American. I run
off in search of another fruit peddler.

Only, when I turn around I’m back at Anzio beach where hellfire rains down on us from long range German artillery. You know, the guns of Krupp. A dogface next to me in the foxhole turns
and shouts, “Pray! Pray to God for help!”

I start praying and he grabs my arm.

“But tell him not to send Jesus. This is no place for kids!”

A shell blows up next to us and I wake up.

Rain slams against the balcony doors. I roll over and try to force myself to dream of the cupie-doll lips.

Thankfully, I don’t dream at all.

Maggie answers the door wearing a flowered sarong skirt and a red blouse with black piping. She’s barefoot, a coffee cup in her hand. I raise the brown bag in my hand.
She smiles and her lips are candy-apple red this morning.

“Beignets,” I tell her. “From Morning Call.”

She leads me back through the house, through the smoldering incense and candles to the kitchen where both fans are already blowing. As she pours me a cup, I pile the half dozen beignets on a
saucer and place them in the center of the Formica table.

In a short sleeved white shirt and dungarees, I’m casual today. I even wear tennis shoes.

She sits across from me, picks up a beignet and takes a dainty bite of the French pastry – powdered sugar sprinkled on square donuts without holes. I pick up a beignet and tell her,
“I came as a customer today.”

She smiles. “I figured that would be your next move.”

“I have problems,” I tell her. Only I can’t help the wicked grin from crossing my lips.

“I know,” she says seriously.

A half hour and two cups of coffee later, I’m in the living room, reclined on the maroon sofa with candles burning around me and incense smoking up the place. Maggie moves next to me and
rubs a potion on my forehead and the back of my hands. It’s cool and smells like overripe bananas.

She moves to the chest-of-drawers and lights two large green candles, then comes back and sits on the coffee table, crossing her legs, closing the sarong that gave me a quick look at her pale
thighs.

“Close your eyes,” she says softly.

I go along. The air becomes stuffier and I smell something else. The green candles. Musty, they smell like mud. No, they smell like an old shoe left out in the rain.

“Tell me your most pressing problem.” Her voice sounds distant, but I open my eye and she hasn’t moved.

“I dream about the war a lot.” My eyelids close by themselves. I try to force them open, but they’re too heavy. I drift.

I can hear her breathing close to me now. Her breath brushes my cheek.

“That isn’t your problem,” she says and I feel her rub lotion on my forehead again. She takes my hands in hers and rubs my knuckles. It takes a moment for me to realize
she’s humming softly. A sweet tune, her voice is soothing. And I drift again, further and further. I’m carried on her voice and feel as if I’m floating.

“So,” she says when I open my eyes. “Feel better?”

I sit up and stretch. I feel much better, rested, as if I’ve slept for hours. I look at my watch and it’s been less than an hour. Sitting up, I realize I’ve a raging hard-on.
Glad my pants are baggy.

She stands and moves to the green candles and blows them out.

“Come back to the kitchen,” she says. I follow the easy movement of her hips beneath the sarong to the well-lit kitchen where she pours us each a fresh cup of Java.

As I take a sip, she says, “Your dreaming about the war is your way of working it out. Your dreams will become less violent. They have already, over the last year, haven’t
they?”

The rich coffee and chicory warms me. I’m cold and can’t understand why.

“The war isn’t your problem.”

“What is?” I ask, half jokingly.

“Sex.”

The big eyes look innocently at me.

Sex, huh? I gotta admit, she knows how to keep it interesting.

“You want sex.”

“What, now?” I laugh.

“Always.” She’s serious.

I take another sip and lean back in the chair.

“What red blooded American boy doesn’t want sex all the time? I’m an ex-cop, and ex-GI. I’m French and Spanish. I’ve got hormones coming out of my ears.”

She shakes her head, pulls her hair back with one hand as she takes a drink of coffee. She puts the cup down and I smell her perfume for the first time. Less sweet than Diane Redfearn’s,
it’s nice and subtle.

“I’ve never met a man with as powerful a sex drive as you.” She says it so seriously, I can’t laugh, although I want to.

“You want sex now with me and you want sex with your clients.” She props her elbows up on the table. “You want sex with just about every woman you see. The attractive ones,
anyway.”

“What’s abnormal about that?”

“Your sex drive is super-potent. Insatiable. You want mind-numbing sex.” She says it matter-of-factly, as if she just told me I wanted to be a fireman when I grow up.

I laugh aloud. And I wonder where she’s going with this. She’s right about one thing. I’d love to screw her – right now. On the kitchen table. Jesus! Maybe I am
insatiable. I shake the thought away.

“Your sex drive is quite similar to a male cat’s.”

She catches me with my cup to my lips. I cough and spill coffee on the table. She reaches back, pulls a towel off the counter and tosses it to me. I shake my head as I wipe up the spill.

Me – a tom cat?

“That’s right,” I tell her. “You’re good with animals, too. You tell this stuff to the tom cats in the neighborhood?”

She takes a drink of coffee.

“What’d you do, liberate all the cats and dogs in the neighborhood?” I say, facetiously as I raise my cup again.

“I freed them. I felt their desires, the inner dreams and set them free. They ran away. Just like your clients’ husbands.” She gives me that big-eyed, innocent look again.

I put the cup down. “Wait.” I raise an index finger. “Let me get this straight. Fortenberry and Redfearn went through what I just went through and you told them their secret
desires and they left their wives?”

She nods and finishes her coffee.

“It took several sessions,” she says as she stands and puts her cup in the sink.

“What did you tell them? What are they looking for? Other women?”

She puts her hands on the table and leans toward me. “That’s confidential.”

The doorbell rings.

“I have an appointment. Thanks for the beignets.” She shakes her head. “And the interesting walk through your psyche.”

I’m dismissed, I guess. She leaves and I follow her down the hall. She turns into a bedroom. I stop outside just as she comes out brushing her long hair.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Five dollars.”

I pull a fin out and follow her into the front room. She moves to the door and lets in a middle-aged woman in a cardigan suit. No I don’t want to immediately fuck her new client! Although,
I must admit, the woman has a nice, shy smile and her full lips look . . .

A picture of Thomas the playwright in the afternoon’s
Item
catches my attention as I wait in my office for my clients.

No wonder his face was familiar. He’s Tennessee Williams, author of
A Streetcar Named Desire
, the play that’s got Broadway sizzling. Seems he just won the Pulitzer Prize.
Maggie’s got some clientele.

My office door opens and Truly Fortenberry leads the way in. In another full dress, green this time, she wears a floppy hat with a pink carnation. Diane Redfearn wears a slim-fitting, yellow
dress. Her hair in a bun, she wears no hat. They sit in the same chairs, Diane crossing her long legs.

Freshly shaved, I have on my best blue suit, a starched white shirt and powder blue tie. Women have told me blue goes well with my dark complexion. With the windows open and the ceiling fans on
high, the room feels almost cool.

“I’m not sure what to make of this,” I start. “So I’ll just tell you straight. The red witch is more like a hypnotist. She claims to be able to discover
people’s inner desires and frees them.”

“Frees them?” Truly leans forward.

“She claims that’s why all the cats and dogs have left the neighborhood. She freed them.”

Truly bats her confused eyes at me. Diane looks down at the purse in her lap.

“I don’t think she had sex with your husbands.”

Truly looks even more confused. Diane lets out a long sigh.

“Mrs Redfearn, what did your husband tell you when he left?”

She looks up and shakes her head.

“Did he tell you he was going to sail around the world or something like that?”

She shakes her head again and looks at the windows. Her chest rises as she takes in a deep breath. “He said he was going to Mexico to find a lost city and that he wants a
divorce.”

I turn to Truly who clears her throat and digs a handkerchief from her purse.

“Mine told me he was tired of living with me, tired of being married and wants to live in Cleveland.” Her eyes glisten and she has that look on her face. I’ve seen it before,
the look of desertion, the look of betrayal, the look of an abandoned lover. It’s not a pretty sight, especially on Truly Fortenberry’s puffy face.

“Why?” she moans. “Why would he leave me for . . . Cleveland?”

Diane stands and wraps an arm around her friend.

I wait as Truly cries. What the hell can I tell her? Who, in his right mind, would leave New Orleans for Cleveland? The obvious answer was whoever was married to Truly. I don’t say that,
but I can’t help thinking it. And I wonder if she thinks it too. It’s an unwritten law of nature. Unattractive people know they’re unattractive.

God, I feel terrible. Really. I know I’m superficial when it comes to women, but I wish there was something I could do for Truly Fortenberry. But I’m no wizard. And I’m sure,
if she visited the red witch, Maggie would discover Truly’s inner desire was to be married to Mr Fortenberry.

I look out the window as a mockingbird lands on the wrought iron part of the playground fence across the street. Immediately it goes through its long litany of calls – bouncing, ruffling
its gray and white feathers. A male probably, advertising its voice to passing females.

Finally, Truly stops crying and fixes her face. She stands and thanks me. I tell them I’ll try to find out more about the red witch, if I can. Diane says it won’t be necessary as I
shake her soft hand. For a moment there’s some eye contact between us, but I can’t read it.

They leave me with a good whiff of Diane’s strong perfume.

As I said – nice. Very nice.

The rain started an hour ago; and as I sit in the easy chair behind my closed balcony doors, windblown rain washes across the balcony in waves. It’s so dark outside, it
looks as if the rain has put out the yellow electric streetlights.

The bathroom light is still on behind me, so I know the electricity hasn’t gone out. Leaning back in the chair with my tie loosened and an untouched glass of scotch in my left hand, I
watch the rain. The nearly full bottle of Johnnie Walker Red lies next to my foot. In case I need a quick refill.

The persistent drum of the shower has me drowsy. Leaning back, I close my eyes and envision the cupie-doll lips in candy apple red, pursed in a sweet kiss. I see those hips moving away from me,
lithely, in a smooth feline movement. I see her legs crossed in the sarong. I watch her uncross them slowly. The sarong falls open and the front of her sheer white panties comes into view. I see
the dark mat of her pubic hair through the panties.

I hear her humming again, her voice echoing in my mind. The tune fades, then rises again. I try to open my eyes, but my eyelids are so heavy, I can only crack them. I try harder. Then I feel her
fingers on my chin. Softly, she traces her fingertips down my throat, then back up to my chin.

I’m on her sofa and strain to open my eyes. I think I see her face above me but it fades and her fingers leave my throat. The humming is to my right, hovering above me. Turning my head, I
try to look, but everything’s hazy.

I feel myself fall into a deep well.

It’s so hot I can barely breathe.

I have to open my eyes. Concentrating, focusing all my strength, I pull myself back.

The humming returns, still above me and to my right.

I force my eyelids to open but no matter how hard I try, I only manage to crack them. The darkness fades slowly and I see her, swaying next to me, her hands clasped behind her head. Her eyes are
still closed.

Her hands move down the back of her neck and around to her throat. And slowly she unbuttons her blouse, pulls it out of the top of her sarong and drops it on the coffee table behind her.

She reaches back and unfastens her white brassiere and I strain to focus my eyes on her round breasts. Her pink nipples are pointed as she continues swaying. She reaches to the knot on the side
of her sarong. She drops the sarong atop her blouse and bra.